A kinder, gentler Ted Cruz?

Updated 4:51 pm, Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Sen. Ted Cruz seems to be adopting a softer profile in the Senate, but he is still popular among tea party conservatives. That's better than being liked by his colleagues.

Sen. Ted Cruz seems to be adopting a softer profile in the Senate, but he is still popular among tea party conservatives. That's better than being liked by his colleagues.

Photo: Pete Marovich, Bloomberg

A kinder, gentler Ted Cruz?

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The United States Senate is part high society and part high school. Senators hang out in cliques. They dress the same and talk alike. They bully those who won't conform. Eventually, those who are picked on get tired of eating alone in the cafeteria so they give in, change their style and go along to get along.

This is the only explanation for something that many of us didn't see coming: the kinder and gentler Ted Cruz.

The first-year report card of the junior senator from Texas, a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate — is clearly stamped: “Does not play well with others.”

Now, the firebrand seems to be softening his approach.

Cruz appeared on Univision's Sunday show “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos” in a feeble attempt to connect with Latino voters — or more accurately, that sliver of the Latino community that gets its news in Spanish.

What a waste of time. We're talking about a network that doesn't bother to camouflage its liberal bias and which often behaves as if it is the Latin American arm of the Democratic National Committee.

When Ramos asked Cruz why he opposed comprehensive immigration reform, the senator insisted that, in fact, he supported it. A good follow-up question would have been how Cruz defined “comprehensive immigration reform.”

When I interviewed Cruz in January, he gave the answer:

“No. 1, we need to get serious about securing the border, about stopping illegal immigration, particularly in a post-9/11 world. It doesn't make any sense that we don't know who is coming into this country and we don't know their history, and their background. But No. 2, we also need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American Dream.”

So, for Cruz, comprehensive immigration reform means securing the border and encouraging legal immigration. For most Americans, it also means dealing with the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States.

Meanwhile, the kinder and gentler Cruz has taken a break from openly antagonizing Republican Senate colleagues — even those who deserve to be challenged. He has agreed to remain neutral in primary fights next year and not raise money for the Senate Conservatives Fund, an outside group that is applying pressure to some of the same GOP lawmakers who have been leaning on Cruz to fall in line. The group aims to defeat sitting GOP senators by funding primary opponents. The biggest target is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who faces a tea party-backed primary opponent in Kentucky.

According to Politico, Cruz broke the reassuring news to his colleagues at a lunch meeting of Senate Republicans.

I suppose that's easier than hiring a food tester.

This was a mistake. Senators are so afraid of accountability that they'll do anything they can to avoid having to face a primary opponent. How would this go over at your job? Could you tell your boss that you no longer want to be evaluated, or have to compete with co-workers for promotions and raises?

Remember how we got here. Republican voters are finally figuring out — thanks to how the GOP establishment folded over Obamacare — that they've been bamboozled into supporting Republican candidates who are not the solution but the problem.

Cruz is seen as an exception to the rule, someone guided by integrity and principle. So, naturally, he's become a rock star with a major portion of the GOP base. He recently came out on top in a Values Voter Summit straw poll of possible 2016 GOP presidential candidates with 42 percent of the vote. In second place were former Sen. Rick Santorum and conservative activist and surgeon Ben Carson, both with 13 percent.

In fact, Cruz seems to be as beloved by the conservative faithful in the heartland as he is hated by the Republican establishment in Washington.

If that's true, Cruz got the better of the deal. It's been a rough 10 months on the job, but Cruz is still standing. And despite the beatings he's taken, he's becoming stronger than ever.